The Institute of Polymers and Energy Chemistry (IPEC), Nanchang University was established by Professor Yiwang Chen, who is the winner of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, a candidate for the national Millions of Leading Engineering Talents, and a member of the “Ten Thousand Talent Program”. IPEC is a multidisciplinary institute. The research in the lab focuses on energy conversion and storage materials & devices, including organic and perovskite solar cells, supercapacitors, metal-air batteries, and silicone rubbers as well as other frontier sciences.

The lab, with an area of 2000 m2 and 80 million fixed assets, conducts both basic and applied research programs. Currently, there are 7 professors, 1 winner of the National Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 1 winner of the national Millions of Leading Engineering Talents, 1 winner of membership of the “Ten Thousand Talent Program”, 1 winner of the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, 1 recipient of the Chang-Jiang Professorship from the Ministry of Education under the Cheung-Kong Scholars Program, 2 winners of the National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents, 1 winner of the National Science and Technology Youth Talent Support Program, and 5 winners of the “Double Thousand Plan” Science and Technology Innovation High-End Talent Project of Jiangxi Province. More than 200 PhD and master students have graduated from this lab. Moreover, more than 60 national research grants have been approved to this lab, including the State Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the Sino-German International Cooperation Project, the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the General Program from the Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Program).

The lab has published more than 500 research papers in high quality journals such as Nat. Commun., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., and Adv. Mater., etc. The lab also got more than 50 authorized invention patents. The staff in this lab has won the first prize of the Natural Science Award of Jiangxi province once, the second prize of Natural Science from the Chinese Ministry of Education once, the second prize of the Natural Science Award of Jiangxi province four times, the third prize of Technical Invention of Jiangxi Province once, and the second prize of Teaching Achievement in Jiangxi Province three times. More than 10 PhD students have won excellent doctoral dissertations in Jiangxi Province, and 4 students have won the China Youth Science and Technology Innovation Awards. The lab has made some breakthroughs in printing fabrication flexible solar cells and producing high energy density supercapacitors, and some novel silicone elastomer functional materials have been industrialized.